The Lost Ones

Think. Her heart pounded in her chest and her head throbbed. Her blue eyes glimmered as she scanned the area and her small steps were brisk, furtive. Her tail quivered behind her as she zipped through the terrain. Think. Think! Her mind was actually frozen with the thought; her soul so desperate to know that she skipped over reason. Where could they be? She was so frantic to find them. She was spinning, trembling, running from place to place… She had searched everywhere she thought they could be. She had scoured the den they had taken shelter in; the remaining area, tried to find a scent. Snow seemed to wipe every trace of her dear siblings away. Wouldn’t there be at least a foot trail? No. It had snowed ever-more, covering the tracks… It was as if they were never there. Vanished.

Her heart was palpitating. She was out of options. She had picked a direction and went with it; hoping vainly. It was all she had left. She could stay there, where they had once been. She knew intuitively that it would be best to stay there and so she had for several days… But what if they were hurt? She was certain now that she had to leave. Her fur stood on end as she wandered father in the snow. It was not snowing now but she had to move her light body through piles of it. Were it not for her blue eyes, for the black charcoal of her ears and face, she would be lost in the white snow. It was cold on her limbs and flanks but she pressed on through the deep miserable weather. If only… If only she had some clue. Something. She had a sinking feeling that somewhere along the way she had lost them; that as each day went by it was only more improbable to find them. Her nightmares had returned with vicious fervor; and she witnessed murder again in her sleep, but it was not her parents this time. No. It was her precious siblings, the last family she had in the world, ripped from her. She swallowed a lump in her throat and pressed on. She scanned from place to place; eyes searching so quick for living bodies that she was oblivious to the redwood trees; to the sun that had disappeared into a cloud of gray, soon to snow again.